5o8 History of the English Landed Interest. 



un discoverable at the time, and we cannot impute any great 

 lack of perception to the Tories on this account, but surely 

 they must have foreseen that the new Act, while it put an end 

 to the pauperising of able-bodied labour, left the poor man 

 totally unaided in his struggle to subsist on food artificially 

 rendered scarce by State Protection. In 1834, there sprang 

 into existence the Chartist propaganda. Ostensibly'" a political 

 organisation, there lurked beneath its surface the same discon- 

 tent of a starving people which wrought sucli fearful havoc on 

 seiguorial interests in France. Henceforth the Radicals had a 

 formidable and terrible ally in their agitation against Protec- 

 tion, and as Rogers points out, this unwonted communistic 

 attitude of English labour collapsed as soon as the repeal of 

 the Corn Laws reduced the price of the necessaries of life.^ 



Our chief cause for dissatisfaction with the policy of the 

 employers of work-people at this juncture, is their failure, 

 while it was in their power, to unite the interests of labour 

 with those of capital. The intelligence of the peasant a hun- 

 dred years ago was so backward, that it was natural for the 

 landlord and farmer to overlook the importance of such a 

 policy ; but at the same time we find that it was forced on 

 their notice by those far-sighted individuals who, in response 

 to an invitation from the Board of Agriculture, made known 

 their views on this and every branch of rural economy. 



Thus in the Agricultural Report of the Board for the West 

 Riding of Yorkshire it was stated that the only method of 

 making wages proportional to the rise or fall in the value of 

 money and provisions, is to pay them in kind. In the part of 

 the country where this writer resided nearly the whole of the 

 farm servants were paid thus. They had a certain quantity of 

 grain, maintenance for a cow summer and winter, a piece of 

 ground for planting potatoes and raising flax upon, and what- 

 ever fuel they required, given gratis. These, with the privi- 

 lege of keeping a pig and a few hens, enabled them to live and 

 bring up their families in a comfortable manner ; and while 

 their income was considerably less than people of their station in 

 other parts, they on the whole were better fed, better dressed, 

 ^ Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 440. 



